How The Courier-Journal and WHAS responded to the Flood

Jan. 21, 2007

Written by

Barry Bingham Sr.

Interviewed by Terry L. Birdwhistell

[Editor's Note: Barry Bingham Sr. was editor and publisher of The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times and president of WHAS, Inc., for 35 years. He died in 1988.]

The 1937 flood -- it took a disaster, really, to give us the biggest boost we ever got, I suppose, in national publicity. It happened to be the only time when I came back to play, at all, an active part in WHAS.

I was on the air quite a lot during those days, which I had never done before. They were terribly short on personnel. You see, we were trying to stay on the air 24 hours a day. We were the only outlet, really, for Louisville, at the time when the whole downtown area was completely flooded, and all of our communications were cut off. We were able to get out only through telephone lines to Nashville by WSM. So the great job was to try to keep on the air constantly, so as to relay emergency calls, which were coming out all the time.

And they ran very short on personnel to handle the microphones, so really, for the first and last time, I spent hours on the air relaying these messages that were coming in about a boat was wanted at a certain place -- a place you couldn't believe, because it was what you ordinarily think of as high and dry land -- at the corner of Fifth and Breckinridge, let's say, something of that kind, which nobody would have ever imagined as being part of the Ohio River, but it was at that time!

And we wouldn't claim any great credit for that, but the amazing part was that no panic took place in this city. I do think the fact that 'HAS was able to keep on the air during all that time was quite an element in that.

Also, no epidemic ever took place -- no outbreak of disease. There was great concern about that. People were afraid that as the floodwaters receded, we might find ourselves in an even worse situation, with typhoid fever or many other germ-borne diseases. A great deal of time on the air was devoted to putting on public health experts and people who could tell people what they should do -- not just about boiling water, but various other things they ought to do.

They were directed to go and get their typhoid shots, constantly, on the air. This was really dinned into people's ears. And not only did 'HAS do that, but they had airplanes flying over the whole city, and the voice would come from the airplane, which is really quite eerie, saying, "You must take your typhoid shots. You must take your typhoid shots."

My poor wife was in the hospital having a baby [his daughter Sallie] at this time, and I can't tell you how strange it was. All the lights were cut off in the hospital. They had nothing but lanterns. And here was this strange voice coming from the clouds, "Take your typhoid shots." Well, everybody was frightened. It was a good thing we were.

And you know, the amazing part is, there was only one life lost during that flood. People couldn't believe there could be such a record.

One other thing came to our assistance, I think, and this is just a curious psychological factor. There's something about stress that makes people come to life more than they ordinarily do. Adrenaline begins to run.

I saw exactly the same thing happen in the air-raid she]ters in London during World War II. These people were living night after night underground in very unhealthy conditions -- no fresh air, people packed into a small space, people sneezing, coughing, and that sort of thing. No epidemics. They never even had a flu epidemic down there.

Well, the same kind of thing, in a shorter period of time, happened in Louisville. People were uncommonly healthy. It is really quite strange what happened. And part of that, I do think, was due to the great effort that was made by, fur instance, Hugh Leavell, who was the city health officer at that time, who was on the air constantly telling people what to do. And part of it was this strange psychology that makes people do better when they are under pressure.

I lived downtown, because I had gotten my wife into the hospital by the very hardest, when this baby was coming on. We had two children at home, and I got them out and evacuated them. And so I just lived downtown. I had a room at the Seelbach Hotel, which was the nearest place to the office, and I slept for a few hours a night at the Seelbach.

The rest of the time I was in the office all of the time. The one thing I could do most readily, I think, was to work on the radio station, because the newspapers were flooded out. [The Courier-Journal and Times] operated up at Shelbyville and then later at Lexington. There seemed to be no particular point in my going up there to try to get out that four-page paper which we were doing, or help get it out. That was well manned.

So I just tried to do what I could here at the radio station. We didn't realize, at the time, by the way, that this was attracting anything like so much national attention as it did attract. But then we began getting amazing offers of help from all over the country. People were coming in here from all over the United States to try to bring in equipment, and food and medicines, and anything they thought would be useful.